Pumpkins Redux: post15 for "Artists"

So now it’s Wednesday. Around 6pm Paul and I gut and carve pumpkins. I’m feeling untalented. “You know I can’t render, so my design will look like a sixth grader’s work. Yours will have much more style.” Paul chooses to be gracious. “Don’t set yourself up for failure before you even begin.” 

Marty, dunce that he is, sits and smokes and talks without lifting a finger to the task. Just like he’s welcome or something. “I’m officially a gerbil now,” he claims between drags. “Candish took me down to the health club and I joined the other gerbils.” He describes the club, which is directly across the street, and his surprise that it’s clean and lit dramatically instead of overbright.

“I believe you have a girlfriend, Marty,” I say. “You moved out of the mess and joined a health club.” He claims it’s all about getting back in shape and takes another drag on the ciggie. Paul and I quibble over design and tools and process and outcome. “The nose is a trapezoid,” he says. He draws one on the newspaper we have spread to contain the mess. Then he reaches across to touch up the pumpkin mouth I’m carving. “That’s your pumpkin,” I say. “This is my pumpkin.” Marty inserts comments about health club equipment into our argument just as though he and Paul sit here alone. Marty flicks a cigarette ash into the measuring cup I brought to remove pulp.

Anne is on the deck rolling cigarettes because, supposedly, that saves money and cuts down on frequency. When the rolling machine gets stuck, she solicits Paul’s help. She confesses her life right along as though somebody cares, claiming she’ll stay living with Adas and her sister found a different arrangement. I try to add a comment but, clearly, I’m imposing. So I stick with the task at hand. 

Paul advises me, turning easily from advising Anne. “Now score the rind for whiskers so the light shines through.” I complain, though. “The face will collapse sooner if I stroke across.”

“You two are like brother and sister,” Anne says. I try to answer with a laugh, but she ignores me. She’s sharing the time with Paul. It gets dark suddenly at 6:15 when we’re less than half finished. The deck lights are on a timer gauged for summer sunset. I complain about the inconvenience, but then feel smirking from all directions. I’m so sick of the poison. 

“Aha!” I say when I finish a jack-o-lantern face on the first pumpkin. “I have achieved pumpkin carving!” I set a sterno candle in the decorative piece and place it where I can see it from my studio. We clean the mess and retreat inside and order pizza to devour during a new episode of Lost. The pizza is hot and the episode just underway when Marty knocks on my door. “The internet is down. Can you check yours?” I ask him to join us for pizza but he claims he has a cigarette and he knows I don’t allow smoking in the studio.  

“Listen, the show just started. I’ll have a look in forty minutes, okay?” He rolls his eyes. “I need to send email to a client right away.” That seems strange. What’s right away to a drunk who just spent an hour making a nuisance of himself on the deck? “You can access email from anywhere. Try Candish’s place.” He leaves in a huff because I won’t serve him. But I don’t care. I have pizza and Lost and cat and–

Later I check the computer and wander down to studio 114. “The net’s down,” I say, “and I tried the quick fixes Roger taught me. It’ll have to wait until I can call SBC unless you have a phone number for Roger.” Marty speaks with sudden authority. “Roger’s dead.” He sees my surprise and adds, “I mean, Roger’s gone from the building and won’t be back.” Like it’s my fault or something.

“Well, sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll call SBC in the morning.” But Marty’s not satisfied. “It’s more than an inconvenience. I need to send this file to a client.” I suggest he use email on a fellow tenant’s computer, but he frowns like that’s not a possibility. I say my goodnights and forget about him.

Thursday morning I’m up at 6:30. I spent the time yesterday fooling with pumpkins and now need to prepare for Friday’s classes. I spy Candish and Marty on the deck with morning coffee. No tension there, so he must have sent his most important file. So I grade papers and develop the assignment and watch President Bush’s speech on foreign policy.  Ha, ha, he uses compare and contrast examples for Al Queda and Soviet Communism. I jot-down several examples to share with my early class. 

Marty knocks and wants to know if I can unplug the equipment and reboot everything. “Candish said she had a similar problem with SBC and they recommended that.” I’m aghast and cannot hide my amazement. “I thought you wanted our arrangement to remain a secret. You told the others?” He shrugs weakly. “Just Candish.” I only laugh and tell him that whatever Candish knows, everybody knows. I immediately regret my comment because I’m sure she’ll hear it. Another log fueling the mama-drama fire.

“Candish says to reboot,” he stubbornly repeats. I want to shout that I’m don’t configure the equipment according to Candish’s instructions, but bite my lip. Marty calls SBC using my phone bill and information, but gets nowhere as usual. “I can reach out to my IT technician,” I say. “But it’ll cost for a house call.” I call and set an appointment for 1pm, which I think is fast service. Marty goes into his whine about the need to email a client.  I want to kill him.

My IT serviceman arrives and spends an hour. I determine during the effort that the DSL line is dead. I make the IT guy reconfigure my ibook the way it was before he arrived. He’s no help but wants to ask me tough questions about why I’m sharing service with someone I’m not sleeping with, then charges me $100. Who’s the whore here? When he finally leaves, I call SBC and get some rigmarole about how if the problem is my interior line, then there’s a charge. Two hours later it’s working fine. SBC sucks.

Carving Pumpkins: post14 for "Artists"

I thought it was a good idea at the time. Silly me. A pumpkin carving party on a Tuesday around 6:00 when people drift in from day jobs. I run Paul around in the early afternoon to select four sizable pumpkins purchased at Gina’s landscaping store, also smaller pumpkins, some colored twisted gourds, and several pots of kale. I clear part of the deck that can be viewed from my window and stack the leftover summer tools and candle holders with other storage. I disturb as little of Candish and Jack’s arrangement as possible. My intent is to create a Halloween display I can enjoy when I look out during the morning coffee hour.

Dan calls. He has moved from Colorado Springs to Silt and works packaging elk meat. Elk meat? The work pays twenty dollars an hour, though.  The winter tourist season starts in November, so he’s spending the transition time hiking and white water rafting. He emails photos of himself holding garter snakes and black snakes. 

I tell him I used his photos of the Chicago Bean for an in-class demonstration. He is pleased and cooes over the phone. The students seem to care, or are they just waiting out the class for their b and then released to study something they like? I confess that I cannot tell because freshmen are so unformed.

I post a notice about the pumpkin carving party, but it’s too cryptic. Paul writes a longer version on the message board about bring your own tools and band-aids and pumpkins are available at Gina’s. With preparations in place, I wait for Tuesday at 6pm to roll around.

Except…  Studio 113 rented to a friend of Jonas, a senior at Columbia College who also works full time. Marty has moved to 114, but he’s a chain-smoker, so 113 needs painting. The landlord’s painter has a schedule conflict, his busy season after all, and Paul decides to paint the studio himself. Five days are allotted for start to finish, or so it’s agreed. Paul, of course, has an idea about scrubbing the walls first, then primer, then various shades of white each applied to an appropriate area. The ceiling is fragile tin, so a small roller and extra care is required, Paul asserts. “This effort is like painting the grit on a potato chip.” Marty is required to clean the kitchen or lose his security deposit, so together they work in studio 113 for three days, with Candish’s advice, of course.

So I come down to ask about can we start with pumpkin carving now and find Paul stressed and being judged by Marty and Candish and Jack. Paul is hours from finishing and the new tenant wants to take possession by 10pm, a full day early. Jack whispers in the halls that last year Paul was still clearing the studio Jack rents three days after Jack wanted to paint and move. Mama-drama is about to rev into full throttle.

Marty circles outside his old apartment where Paul is frozen with indecision. Marty doesn’t pitch in, too busy smoking and drinking, so I volunteer to paint the baseboard, and add,  “The new tenant won’t care that the cupboard under the stairs is unfinished.” We select what can be completed by deadline and roll up our sleeves and have at it. 

Marty circles back and asks what about the pumpkin carving party. “We’ll have to do it when we do it,” I say while painting. “It’s just us.  It’s not like we’re being timed or graded or something.” I don’t get the problem, silly me. 

It’s October, but still 82 degrees after sunset. I finish the baseboard and go to the deck to cool down. Candish and Marty and Anne are seated at the table, so I take a seat in the deck chairs on the side and drink a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I get the distinct feeling they’re gloating that the pumpkin carving party didn’t happen, so I linger to claim a presence on the deck. Conversation changes from gossip to the cost of fixing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. 

They go inside and each person speaks to me in passing except Candish who doesn’t talk to me EVER. She returns twice to gather her cats, and still doesn’t speak. I stay where I’m seated, stubbornly, but a picture about their talk begins to form in my mind. I go to check Paul’s progress and learn the tenant has arrived and wants the keys and for Paul to finish and leave the place free to occupy. 

I realize the new tenant has stepped around to greet Candish and Jonas, now all seated in her studio since the deck is befouled with my presence. None offer to help Paul move ladders or clean or carry. They sit over there judging Paul and telling stories about other times he was a day late and a dollar short. Well, I’m done with all that. So I pitch in again and rush him past gestures of perfectionism. We dump cleaning and painting equipment in the hall, and Paul wanders over to Candish’s studio to deliver the keys. They are frankly disappointed the new guy named Emanuel isn’t angry and shouting about Paul’s performance.

Mario comes in from a gig and stops to talk. He makes no gesture to help, but at least he’s not perched on some overhead branch with caw-caw-caw. Marty circles again with some lame comment about how Paul says they cannot leave anything in the hall but all his painting gear is stacked here. I never liked Marty, but now I hate him, a satellite to Candish who watches and smokes, but doesn’t lift a finger. And her! Candish takes credit for Marty’s renewed self-esteem with the cleaner studio, but waits like a magpie for Paul to fail so she can say I told you so. Ugly people. 

We post a notice about how pumpkin carving is postponed to Wednesday and make several trips to carry painting equipment upstairs. Others are hanging around shadowed corners with whispers and smirks. Then it’s my bedtime.

In the morning when I leave to teach, the halls are clear. I’m thinking this particular mama-drama works in my favor because it renews the deck from trailer-trash use. The drama saved a friend from torturous machinations, and creates an excuse to continue my presence as a gardener. We’ll carve pumpkins when it’s convenient. The effort could take days to finish.

Ha, ha. Every day brings a new passive-aggressive gesture. Candish reclaims her bathroom next to the deck that she supposedly couldn’t use all summer. She removes the garden hose that was strung through the bathroom window for plant maintenance. Is this abdication? Is she abandoning the garden to pumpkin carvers? And if pushback works so easily, then why was I walking on eggshells all summer to avoid a fight? Silly me.

Machinations: post13 for "Artist"

Paul posts on the bulletin board rather often, sometimes bad poetry or tortured puns, and sometimes tidbits he cuts from old encyclopedias a former tenant left behind. I used photos from those books myself for scanning into a website before I returned them to the communal bookshelf. One day I recognize a few clippings of famous paintings and wonder if they could be from the same source. Two are of the screaming pope by Francis Bacon. Something is off-base here.

So I’m sitting on the deck grading papers and Mario comes to his window. “Mind if I join you? Just wanted to catch-up.” Dressed in chinos only, he climbs through the window and takes a seat in the sun. “How goes it with the band?” I ask. Mario joined a cover group with a local following that works the regional circuit several nights a month. 

“We’re doing Kilroys in Indianapolis this weekend, then it’s Joe’s on North and Green on Tuesdays. You should attend.” I only shrug. “How big is the crowd?” I ask.

“With this band I’ve never performed for fewer than 1500. It’s intense. The noise, the applause. I was crouched at the edge of the stage taking photos of the lead guitarist. I wasn’t playing that number… I leaned back to get the shot and lost my balance. Several hands reached for me and actually pulled me into them, then passed me along the top of the crowd holding me above their heads. I had to relax and just let it happen, you know? It was intense.”

Mario tells a long story about his first one-night-stand and how he was a gentleman and didn’t put her in a cab, but rather drove her home. “I called a couple days later because I felt bad,” he confesses.

“She was just using you as an object,” I claim with a laugh. “In my day, the night was successful only if you went home with the bass guitarist. It’s all about bragging rights the next day.” Mario squints in the sun. Dark hair against white skin, and he’s been working out. “I kinda got a sense of that when we talked. I’m not used to the lifestyle yet.”

“But you could get used to it, huh?” We laugh and talk awhile about the pitfalls of fame and how the lifestyle can be addictive and destructive. He feigns modesty and I hide my sarcasm. Well, maybe not. Mario learns I teach MWF so I’m absent from the artist studios until 3pm. “Great! Now I have my times for music. I’m tired of the headphones.” He stands and does a little jig. I’m kind of hurt that my presence crimps his style and he thinks of me as a grinch. “Have at it,” I agree.

I’m still sitting over student papers in the pleasant sunshine when Paul invites me out for coffee. We go to Starbucks and the espresso warms him to conversation. “Mario hates women and only uses them. They got in after three on Saturday and she was gone by 9am. And all that bragging. Candish says everybody at the artist studios has looks and could get lucky any night.” 

They are so ungenerous. Why not revel in Mario’s success?  “He told me a story about a one-night-stand, and I claimed she was just using him as a sex object.” Paul laughs and slaps high-five. “His changes are far more serious than you think,” I add. “I predict a revolving door of music lovers while Mario gets a taste of local fame. Hide and watch. Hide and watch.”

When we get back, Paul points to his most recent posting on the message board, a nude with a sizable bottom and too many vertebrae in her spine. The screaming pope in blue overtones is juxtaposed by a portrait of a real pope. Paul indicates the similarities in composition for the two pope images. “I took these from Art & Civilization you gave me,” he continues as part of his description. 

“You cut-up Art & Civilization?” I demand. He just stares. I have to shrug it off to maintain balance with a friend. “Just a textbook,” I say with a dismissive gesture.

He destroyed the weighty and costly coffee table book, Jeez Louise. So I think back. You know, that treacherous pitfall of memory that we all try to avoid. Paul and I bonded last summer when he was the primary gardener and I wanted to hold a get-to-know-the-neighbors party on the deck. What was I thinking? At any rate, we spent a weekend seriously rearranging already placed houseplants, and then added pots of annuals for balance. He told great stories and took direction well.

Later Paul provided bags and bags of green velvet material he had scrounged from Starbucks when they redecorated display windows. High-nap industrial velvet with coffee stains on one side of the long panels. But since they had hung doubled up, the backside was relatively unscarred. Last summer I laid them out in my studio and cut and sewed six 60”x85” panels for my windows. Elegant tall dressy green curtains lend a certain men’s club flavor to my living space. I was grateful for Paul’s talent for finding free treasures.

But then I saw his studio. Jeez Louise. More than a filthy guy space, it was a full decade of trash and dirt and paint cans and stored scrounged pieces he may find a use for later. And it stank. 

Paul rescued discarded fabric samples from the annex of local hardware store, assembled books of swatches of expensive cloth but none of it useful. Over the winter he ripped the books apart and stowed the material in Walgreen bags in the jumble of his room. He talked continuously about making creative handbags or a man’s vest with the ever-so-valuable swatches, but never committed to a workspace or hours spent in front of a sewing machine. It was a game he played in his head, one of many grandiose games that go nowhere.

Yet, on the other hand… Paul and I hallowed and carved several decorative gourds last October for a candlelit deck display that was a big hit during a group house party. Paul made excellent choices with a sense of style and gestures of care and perfection. He just never applied that energy to his own living space. One artist tenant had claimed that Paul lived like a deposed prince.

***redacted***

I decide finally that it’s a form of senior dementia, this need for snobbery and hoarding, and poking his nose in everybody’s business. If I protect myself from the others, his machinations are just daily entertainment, a distraction from grading papers composed by freshman minds.

I’m leaving to teach one morning and see the clippings from Art & Civilization posted on the message board. Of all the possible images in that weighty book, Paul chose several renditions of the screaming pope. How appropriate.

Fluidity: post 12 for "Artists"

A full moon in Pisces indicates many threads will end and others be renewed. That pesky full moon. It’s the first day of autumn, so harvest is soon and school’s underway. I need a horoscope to tell me this? But theeenn… All three bottles of salad dressing run out, also the big tub of body lotion is low, and the thumbnail-sized container of black eye liner. When the body wash also empties, I’m reminded of the Pisces full moon.  Except I was poor all summer and not replacing household items on a timely basis. Yeah, that’s the real cause.

Eddie and Jenn clean their studio so they can get the security deposit refunded. Jillian’s moving too, and Sean. The halls fill with cast-off goods for the taking. Endless abandoned old style TV sets and dirty microwaves. The shuffle happens every year in some form or another. Jack and Paul are nowhere to be found, probably because they have been too often solicited for afternoons spent doing the heavy lifting. For myself, I decide a scotch with soda is appropriate.

Marty’s moving from 112 to 113, a bigger studio with a cross draft to ventilate his three-packs-a-day habit. He just moves out of the mess. And I mean a serious mess.  He’s a drunk who never cleans but has an agéd and blind cat. Marty shows me studio 113 with its better layout and I offer plants for the window ledge. He hedges with, “Maybe next week.” But when I visit again, Candish and Paul have installed a table with umbrella (good idea) and strung Christmas lights inside the open umbrella (bad idea). I figure I won’t visit there much.

Then it rains; a steady relieving downpour that I know boosts crops in Indiana and Illinois. The deck is refreshed, except mature morning glories streamers begin turning brown. That pesky Pisces full moon again.

It’s premiere week on TV. Lost has a new season where they enter the alien-looking container bearing unlucky numbers. I call Jenn during the first commercial to get her impression. Jenn’s teaching, but Eddie offers an idea. The commercial is over, gotta go.

One cold night is all it takes to encourage fellow tenants to pull plants in from the deck, except the mounted window boxes of petunias and morning glories. At least they cleared part of the mess. When I enter the deck at 8am, carrying a mug of coffee, I realize plants are set willie-nillie in the hall. Probably Paul pulled them indoors as an altruistic gesture to save the growth. I’m confident he’ll pay for that good deed. We need a good freeze so we can winterize the deck and carve a few pumpkins for the new season.

Rhonda dumps the lawyer boyfriend. Or vice versa. He tells her he wants a younger woman to start a family. Rhonda suspects he’s already met this child-bearer because he turned down her offer of sex. The development seems to roll off her back, though, because Fred the philosopher is back in the picture. She was willing to cheat on the lawyer to have Fred again, so her focus shifts. 

Rhonda and I commiserate while running errands to Tippre Hardware and Pier One, then it’s onto practical concerns. Rhonda advises, “That shop is the best place for a manicure. And make a Tuesday appointment. Weekend projects are brutal on our hands, but Tuesday’s manicure lasts several days. A better investment.”

Rhonda just learned her heating bill will top $150 a month over winter. She again considers moving and asks what’s available at the artist studios so she can move back into the building. I tire of her eternally undecided approach. We stop for eggs and pancakes, and Rhonda continues, “Candish thinks Paul trashed the Buddha.” I cannot believe they’re still on that topic. “That’s just dumb. And who cares? It was a broken plaster statue that Candish abandoned one other time when she moved. I’m so tired of their machinations.”

“Candish says Paul is behind all the bad feelings. He fuels the fire when he tattles on each tenant.” I only shake my head. “It all bores me to death. So childish.”

Rhonda pours more syrup on half-eaten pancakes. “My friend Beth is starting a new diet. I said I do it with her. We had a coach years back, a Russian-born trainer and body builder. He reminded her it’s not the workout that counts, but what you put in your body.” Rhonda describes a tuna-and-fruit diet that sounds grim. “I know I’ll never be a size two again.  Ah, you should have seen me then.” She swallows another bite of pancakes. We go round and round about how the body matures and how some doors close while other doors open. I try to be cheerful with, “After all, I’m teaching now. Who would’a thunk?”

“Maybe I’ll go back to the psychic,” she proposes with a brilliant smile. In August Rhonda and her sister were doing a girl’s day out and visited the fortuneteller, then dropped by the artist studios with a bottle of champagne. Dan and I sat on the deck and laughed while they told funny meandering stories about what the psychic guessed rightly or wrongly about their lives. “The psychic said she had insights for me.” 

I shrug. “Yeah, for 85 dollars a pop.” If Rhonda gets her fortune told each time she sheds a lover, the psychic could buy a summer home on the income.

So it seems there’s a web site called Rate Your Professor. Rhonda laughs at what the students post. “About Eileen, one said ‘She’s old. Nobody knows how old. But the things that come out of her mouth will shock you.’ Isn’t that great? And Fred is rated there too. If a teacher’s hot, you can add chili peppers by the name. His has several, and the students say, ‘He’s sooo-ooo-oooo cute.’ Even his boss mentioned that during a committee meeting.” I guess that Fred is back in the saddle again.

Cat’s cast is removed and he gimps around. He has gained three pounds, no longer a kitten. Paul brings cat along when he drops by to list the available repainted studios for this month, but cautions me that I mustn’t encourage Rhonda to apply. “The accountant won’t accept her because she complains too much. Maybe she should go to that psychic to get her life straight.” 

From that crack, I know he was just now talking with Candish. I tell him Rhonda is a good friend of mine and I won’t ditz her. Please take his machinations elsewhere.  There’s something in my tone maybe, and he backpeddles. “Rhonda is a lovely dinner companion. She just shouldn’t live here.”

I give him the bum’s rush. As I recall, Rhonda paid for his burger at Corcoran’s more than once. He blames the rejection of Rhonda’s application for a studio on the accountant in the management office. But we all know who doesn’t want Rhonda living here.

Quiz: post11 for "Artist"

Twenty-three students flunk the quiz, the whole class. So much for my worry that the quiz might be too easy. Twenty vocabulary words taken from the readings, five factual questions, and a compare and contrast based on discussion during the same class period the quiz is administered. They excel at the essay question, but correctly answer only 20% of the vocabulary definitions. The dismal response makes me wonder how much they even understand when I lecture. 

Where is my mistake? I pester everybody with this question. Paul launches into his theory that public schools dismally failed their mission so students read at an eighth grade level. Newspapers are printed in an eighth grade vocabulary. Corporations provide seminars in English and grammar to executive secretaries. “And vice presidents too, I hope,” I add.

“Miss Balkan had a point system and marked you down for repeated misspelling of the same word. At five points an error, you could fail in no time.” Miss Balkan maybe was his eighth grade teacher. “I don’t want to punish them,” I say. “I want to light their minds on fire.”

I email my boss Eileen with a copy of the quiz seeking advice. Jenn and Eddie come in from a day spent moving boxes and furniture and cleaning and unpacking. I detain them in the hallway with my questions while all they want is dinner and a chance to relax. “One student submitted internet pages on the Monroe Doctrine after he volunteered for extra credit. He probably didn’t read them, assuming it was adequate to Google the answer.”

Eddie says, “My students submit web pages all the time, and don’t see anything wrong with that. Only a few belong in Art School. Most have no talent and do nothing with their degrees, so it doesn’t matter.”

Jenn says, “I don’t know what you were expecting by assigning vocabulary. I had a student ask me what was trite. She didn’t know what the word trite means.”

“But you pass them through?” I ask, still seeking my best path. Paul starts again with his theory that it’s all the students’ fault and eighth grade reading level and–  I want to strangle him. Just shut up! It’s Eddie’s advice I need here. 

Eddie’s sweet nature wins out. Exhausted from moving and only wanting dinner, he politely listens then just tries again. I can see how he would prosper in an environment ruled by committee. “The principle is simple. You tell them what you will teach, then you teach it, then you tell them what was taught. Then your ass is covered.”

Paul starts with an old story about someone none of us know who could tell the same story three different practical ways and his success as a teacher. And the one about how they landscaped the quad at a California school but the plants were stolen. So they installed more which were stolen. And only when they made a third attempt did the students understand this was for everybody and kept their hands off. I hear an acerbic tone in my voice when I say, “Maybe their dorm rooms were full of plants by then.” Jenn guesses with a laugh, “Or the third set of landscape plants was thorny evergreens.” 

Eddie reiterates my solution, only for the second time. “Just let the students know what’s coming. Put the essentials on the test, or they won’t learn them. Carrot and stick.” I finally release Jenn and Eddie to seek sustenance and rest.

My boss Eileen answers my email with comfort words about how it takes a couple weeks for any instructor to learn the makeup of the group in class. A more difficult scenario would be if half aced the quiz and half flunked. One method is to group vocabulary words around the root word with prefixes and suffixes. And she often uses a practice quiz before the real quiz to emphasize what’s expected. 

A practice quiz?

Paul repeats that it’s all the students’ fault. I decide I spent too much time with Paul while we painted the wall in my studio. Everything he says I’ve already heard. I insist, “I want to win them over, not punish them. I just need to find a way to get students swimming in the same direction. My direction.”

So we’re cleaning the brushes from the final layer of glaze. A Ralph Lauren opaque product applied then brushed vertically and horizontally to create a sheen with no glare. This coat serves to softens the reds and tie the wall closer to the letterboxed panel on the staircase. “We’re such Bobos,” I say. “We don’t have two nickels to rub together, but we must have a Ralph Lauren product for the wall.”

Rhonda calls and says it’s four-dollar burger night at Corcorans and let’s go. “Give us twenty minutes to stow the utensils, and we’ll meet you there.”

When we’re seated in the noisy pub, however, I instantly regret inviting Paul. No girl talk is possible because I’m unsure how much she wants him to know. So I learn nothing about the lawyer, or has she seen Fred, or none of it. And besides, everything we say to Paul gets back to Candish. The duplicity is stifling. So we try talk shop about teaching, but he inserts himself with full renditions of stories I’ve heard at least twice that same day and drowns Rhonda’s attempts to share her classroom experience. 

Rhonda finally gains a moment between Paul’s stories. “I told my sister about frustration with students, and she reminded me of all the tricks we pulled as undergraduates. How were we different? One time I missed three classes and a test. When I asked to take the test during the next class, the professor started yelling and humiliated me right there in front of the others. But I had a lot of nerve assuming I could just do what I wanted.”

We laugh together. I give it up, finally. “I expected the students to act like adults. What was I thinking?”

Vapors: post10 for "Artists"

Lincoln Park, as it turns out, is at the center of my life; more particularly, Halsted and Fullerton where Lincoln angles northwest. When I exit the Elevated station, memory washes over me. Like in a Robin Hobb novel, I seem to touch jitzin in the wall to activate phantoms from the city’s glory days who re-enact troubled moments within my remote viewing.

My son graduated eighth grade at the church in DePaul’s quad that used to be a seminary.  When he was in diapers, I took undergraduate classes on the same campus. Kathi’s husband David taught at the Theatre School, and we attended compulsory senior scenes to provide audience, all the while trying to hide our inebriation. I lived on Clifton or Altgeld or on Magnolia while my son attended Oscar Mayer grade school, then entered Lincoln Park High. 

More vapors. I worked at a performance bar on Lincoln Avenue during my ill-spent youth and knew many adventures. One day Susan and I got high in Oz Park, then made silly jokes about Alice’s rabbit after a friend passed in a hurry with his bandy legs pumping as he walked away. I dumped a lover during one snowy winter, then couldn’t visit my favorite bar because that was his hangout.

On Fullerton my steps slow and stop while I balance the weight of vertical time. I breathe deeply, taking in bus fumes and jasmine scent and texture of life and–

Anyhow, the English Department is located in McGaw Hall, protected in the quad with its back to noisy Halsted Street. 

I attend adjunct instructor orientation with Rhonda who greets Laura, a smiling suburban married woman with MS. Rhonda insists, “You and Laura attended the same MFA classes at the School of the Art Institute.” I don’t remember her. 

Electricians haven’t finished special wiring in the lecture hall that needs to be ready for the first day of classes, so we must make do in a cramped classroom. Think about it, though, 45 English teachers discussing pedagogy and student performance and all those forms to  complete by thus-and-so time. Tedious day.

Around 10am, I remember Laura from graduate school and can place the hated class we shared. She was so different in 1999, bitter and bony and committed to vagina literature. She had hot eyes and no use for a conservative like me. Now she has soft hair brushed off her face and a quick smile and wanting to succeed at teaching. Marriage agrees with her. Her steps are halting from the MS, but she makes several gestures of independence. Okay, then, she can stay.

Lunch is provided and we take sandwiches and pasta salad to a picnic table by the parking lot. Several adjunct instructors including pretty blonde Amber who used to tend bar at a place on Wells two blocks from the artist studios. And Suzanne, big boned and lovely, who asks thoughtful questions during the breakout group session. 

Adjunct offices are in the lower level of McGaw Hall. I sign up for office hours between my MWF classes, then hunt for which mailbox is mine. The lack of instructional orientation feels similar to when I supported myself by waiting tables. “There’s the ketchup; there’s the coffee. Have at it.”  Now I’m told to submit a syllabus and fill out these forms and upload student information to the online course site. Have at it.

Orientation finishes by three. Rhonda wants to visit the Brown Elephant searching for a cheap couch because she cannot commit to home furnishings and doesn’t want to be poor. We start a lengthy discussion about how the biggest purchase a family makes, after the home and a car, is a couch. We rent, of course, and Rhonda’s car was a gift from a former lover. But the couch she must buy.

Rhonda admits she’s not happy with her new apartment, which is perfect for her, and considers moving into something cheaper. She couldn’t part with the money for a red couch we saw on Milwaukee that would have defined her livingroom with style. She returned the anwar we found on a different shopping trip, and even paid for trucking it both ways. She’s eternally undecided, so nothing in the Brown Elephant meets her needs. 

We trek over to the campus bookstore to be sure our textbooks are in stock. I do a pantomime of her sunny attitude, avoiding the part about indecisiveness. “You draw people together with your cheerfulness. We’re all sitting there thinking, ‘They hate me; I know they do.’ But you say, ‘You must meet Eileen ‘cause she’s great and you’re going to love her and she’ll love you and it’ll be great.’ Or you say, ‘Meet Laura who you met before and liked then, and she likes you and we all like each other,’ It’s a talent not to be discounted. You should teach motivational seminars or something.”

Rhonda is pleased with being complimented and kind to me for the remainder of the day. She even pays for my dinner.

So I read the textbooks for my classes and develop a syllabus for each and submit them to my new boss Eileen who only glances at them. I have several questions that she tolerates. Then I hedge with, “I don’t need all my questions answered on the first day.” I’m uneasy, though, without some training on how to manage a classroom.

What source for this university assumption that an MFA degree qualifies a person to teach? Except Candish teaches art at Columbia College, and she’s bipolar with mood swings and unable to complete anything. She taught even during the months she was off her medication and homeless and sleeping in a vacant warehouse, according to Paul. She practiced hurried hygiene at the school gym, which explains a lot.

I’m determined to muddle through the first week and pester Eileen with questions about how to compose quizzes and how to handle failing students and how to discipline a class or reach an unresponsive class.

 

That jitzin sensation lingers, though, prompting memories of coming home each time I step off the Elevated. Just the sight of tall cottonwood and locust trees in the quad can incite a flood of old images from lush days spent with fleeting friends and hearty laughter.  Nothing in Lincoln Park acknowledges me, yet I feel embraced.  Memory is like that, tricky and unwanted. 

I remember, for example, when I was a student at DePaul, and the classes I took at this campus.  That was thirty years ago when students were still taught by Jesuits.  St. Vincent DePaul College had recently absorbed the seminary and was allowing female students to matriculate.  Now those same students comprise the bulk of the adjunct faculty, such as it is.  

Mario: post9 for "Artists"

I peg Mario as a short-timer at the artist studios when he moves in during January. He tells a charming story about his father’s funeral three days before and how he danced with his mom and grandma. It’s shocking, like breathing in toxic fumes, his honesty with strangers.

Mario’s a musician, mostly guitar and piano, and practices a fusion sound with Mariachi influences. In the cold months he comes to dinner and provides a DVD of performers he admires. Old stuff, sorta Latin jazz. What great fun. Paul’s artist discipline was as a concert pianist trained by private tutors. He and Mario talk shop about finger spread and technical terms and styles of expression. 

I say, “We’ll make you an honorary senior citizen and you can eat here with Paul and Roger and me.” Roger stares. “What?” I ask. This was before the weight of Roger’s lies reached motherlode.

Mario takes the apartment below me where a former tenant left an upright piano. Paul practiced there some days, classical pieces played with style and intellect, start to finish without pause. Mario plays staccato ditties with repeating refrains and some piano-lessons stuff. In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion– Then I learn he’s freshly divorced with two kids, a well-mannered girl of six and her spoiled younger brother. The daughter was practicing earlier. In the jungle–  Wow, Mario’s twenty-four and divorced. 

Mario knocks on my door one day dressed in chinos and a dago-T.  He’s bony with black chest hair and arm hair against white skin. It looks wrong. He curls up on my recliner proud of his Latin prowess. “I was with Candish and we made love and I pleased her, I think. But now I’ve met someone I want to date and what do I say to Candish?” I assure him that he’s asking the wrong person.

On another day he drops by to borrow eggs because his kids are visiting and expect breakfast like they get at home. “I don’t keep dairy,” I say. He asks if eggs aren’t counted as poultry here in America. “Eggs are offered for sale in the dairy aisle,” I explain. He just stares. What is it about young people; I don’t seem to connect? 

Mario launches into a story about performing and all the applause and getting lost after the event but he was rescued by a fan who took him home for the night except her mother asked in the morning who is this and he won her over and they had a nice meal together.  Meanwhile, I wonder what the kids are eating downstairs.

In May the rebound girlfriend moves in. I can tell from a mile away that Ann is a user. She gravitates toward Roger and his flimflam hustle. They spend time on the deck while Roger advises her about life and relationships and outcomes, the blind leading the blind. 

Paul gets on his high horse with how Mario has no heart and it shows in his soulless music that’s just notes, and how Paul would have to lead any performing group they develop together.  He would insist on correct phraseology and hours of practice each day. He’ll clean his studio and get a grand piano and give lessons and shape students and that’ll show Mario.  I just sigh. Paul is a decade past his discipline with music. Castles in the sky, that’s what it is; just castles in the sky.

And then it’s summer and Dan and I are fagged out in front of the blower with Final Fantasy on his Play Station. Paul visits and starts in right away about how Mario and Ann had a screaming fight on the sidewalk that Paul heard and inserted himself into with condescending remarks which he repeats several times.

“’Why don’t you rent a hall and sell tickets?’ I asked. That stopped them dead in their tracks.” Paul insists that Mario hates women but pretends to love women so he can control women. Mario just needs to have someone there and it doesn’t matter who and that’s why they fight and Ann’s moving out but she’s made other friends here so… 

Dan and I shrug and go back to playing video games. What do we care about Mario’s sex life?

But then it blows up in Mario’s face. I hear the story secondhand, more than once. It seems Paul and Roger and Marty were sitting on the deck late one night discussing politics. They sit outside a lot like three derelicts because their studios are filthy. I’ve been in their places several times and know what-of I speak. Mario’s rebound girlfriend Ann moved out already but drops-by to visit friends and she has joins the discussion group. Roger tells some embellished story about how he saved the day and everybody laughs. “We work hard so you don’t have to,” he claims over the goodwill. Mario passes the deck on his way to throw out some trash and sees them and goes ballistic.

I hear this story with all the imagined motivations, again, when Paul and I visit Rhonda’s new place after Sunday brunch. Rhonda and I enjoy Paul’s rendition more than the story itself.  Paul talks about how Mario catches the derelicts talking with Ann and reacts with theatrical surprise throwing his hands back while framed by the lighted doorway. Paul goes to Rhonda’s doorway and pantomimes Mario’s gestures, claiming Mario knew they were sitting on the deck together and took out the trash as an excuse to stage his performance. 

Mario had a screaming fit about how dare they talk to Ann because can’t they see she broke his heart and she should be barred from visiting the building. This from the guy who slept with his neighbor Candish, then casually asked other neighbors how to dump her. Paul finishes with, “So I said, why don’t you run it up a flag pole and see if anyone salutes?”

So, anyhow… Now it’s September and Mario’s back from Columbia, South America, and his family’s fine and he wants to buy a place because hacienda living is the good life.  Mario and Paul discuss real estate values in Chicago and the suburbs and what to avoid.  They can talk cordially on this topic because neither of them has any money.